Democrat Joe Biden should not only surge refugee resettlement to the United States, he must also “revise” President Donald Trump’s “extreme vetting” system, migration activists say.
The activists, who spoke to the Washington Post, said dismantling Trump’s reforms to the refugee resettlement program must include a surge in overall resettlement levels and a revision of Trump’s extreme vetting procedures.
The Post reports:
Experts say Biden will need to go far beyond raising the limit to return the flow of refugee admissions to what it once was; he also will need to remove the existing priority categories, revise the Trump-imposed vetting system and reallocate resources. [Emphasis added]
“There are these extreme vetting protocols in place right now, and there is really no oversight. So the end result is just delays,” said Wa’el Alzayat, the chief executive of the Emgage Foundation, a Muslim American civic engagement organization, and a Middle East policy adviser in the Obama administration. [Emphasis added]
Biden’s plan to overhaul the nation’s immigration system includes a reversal of Trump’s reforms to the State Department’s refugee resettlement program — a boon for the business lobby that has fought against immigration reduction, knowing it forces their industries to mechanize or hire American.
Trump, this year, reduced the annual cap on refugees to 15,000 admissions for fiscal year 2021. The cap is merely a numerical limit and not a goal federal officials are supposed to reach.
The reduction of refugees is the lowest level of resettlement since the program’s inception in 1980, accounting for an 80 percent reduction compared to the Obama-Biden years. Likewise, Trump has sought to allow states and localities to have a say in whether or not they want to resettle refugees in their communities.
On the other hand, Biden has vowed to increase the refugee resettlement program by 700 percent, setting the annual cap at 125,000, with plans to raise that cap every year for at least four years.
Over the last 19 years, more than 985,000 refugees have been admitted to the country. This is a number more than double that of residents living in Miami, Florida, and would be the equivalent of adding the population of Pensacola, Florida, to the country every year.
Refugee resettlement costs American taxpayers nearly $9 billion every five years, according to the latest research. Over the course of five years, an estimated 16 percent of all refugees admitted will need housing assistance paid for by taxpayers.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.